Hi,
a few questions if I may.
I use the free online version of Fitday and I'm considering upgrading to the PC version OR the 'Premium' online. Can someone please tell me what are the differences between these two- basically! (just to clarify: I dont mean the difference between Fitday PC and/or 'Premium' and the free online version)

Also, in either of them is there a function to create customised 'recipies' using raw/single ingredients- I dont eat a lot of processed food or dine out at fast food outlets in the USA, therefore the 'premade' industry food items listed, be them in diners or packaged supermarket foods, are of no use to me. If there is a own recipie making section in the higher version of FD, is it easy to use?

Can you create a customised exercie (e.g. add your own calories expended, distance etc. that you might get from your heart rate monitor)?

One last question. I know that one can set the measurements to metric in you personal profile section (and I have done this), however, this often does not filter through to all other sections of the program. For example, many different parts of the weight logs and graphs still give pounds and all distances or speeds in the exercise section menus are in miles (e.g. running 4mph). Although one can add the actual distance run that day in Km, this is good but not the same thing. I find this inconsistency annoying. Metric is metric and imperial is imperial- although the math is easy I dont wish to have to recalculate speed/distance each time I'm choosing an activity intensity from the drop down list! I would like to be able to choose that I ran today at a pace of 10km/hr. It would be a simple fix Fitday, please consider it!

I might consider buying if I can get some answers on these questions.
Many thanks in advance
B

Bec, Premium gets rid of the advertising. It also gets you more reports and allows you to track "anything". It does not have a recipe calculator.

The PC version is bascially the same, though you can enter foods "off-line" so you don't need in Internet connection. Some of the data entry is also quicker. You do need the Premium service if you wish to synchronize your FitDay PC with the web site.

There are many upgrades in the works, hopefully the recipe calculator will be included as it is a popular request.

It would be good to go in to ‘recipe construction mode’ where you can search for individual single items and then tick a box to include them in the recipe. Or perhaps if you have lists of common items you eat, these could be highlighted or ticked so they can be added as ingredients for the new recipe you are compiling. When you’re finished adding items, a list could appear where the amounts (volumes of weights in metric or imperial) of individual ingredients could be added or changed. The program could calculate a ‘total weight’ for the created recipe based on the sum of the weights of the individual ingredients, from which therefore, the calorie/nutrition profiles of any portion sizes (again, volume or weight) could be calculated. (e.g. we make a healthy soup from fresh ingredients, the total weight including added water might be 6 cups or a kg and Fitday calculates the total weight and total nutrients etc; but from this in meal #1 we eat 1 cup of soup, and in meal #2 we eat 2 cups because we are hungry!

Some other diet trackers that I have trialled have not had this last little tweek- meaning they sum up the calories and nutrition in a whole list of items, i.e. ‘a recipe’, but if you want to adjust the portion size eaten on separate occasions you have to first adjust the separate amounts of the individual ingredients to try and tally it somewhere near what you actually consume. Or just as annoying: you construct the recipe X in the program and then have to guess how many servings it usually makes. Lets say it usually makes about 4 servings, so then when you want to add your portion size of recipe X that day you have to add it as 0.25 of a serving of recipe- OK but not very streamlined or flexible. But what if you don’t know how many servings an unknown recipie makes or it’s one you invented on the spot!? Whatever, both are tedious

In fact, the reason why I like Fitday so much is that the customised food part of the program recalculates for different portion sizes (based on the volume or weight you enter) easily once you have added the calorie+nutrition for a given weight in the first instance. Seems only a little tweek to add this great recalculation feature onto a recipe constructor.
When I was much younger and used to train seriously I used to have a simple excel spreadsheet that would be able to do that- it was crude but still enabled me to get basic calorie information for any portion size!

Anyways, my opinions don’t matter much in the whole scheme of things here, especially when you guys have lots of swish programmers! I’ll buzz off now and simply thank you for a great piece of software that is inspiring me to get fit again ! But I hope you change the metric system bits I mentioned before, some of us remain connected to Europe! Love your work

For what it's worth, I am still using ver 1 and there is a great recipe builder in that program. In fact I have been testing against Weight Watchers, Loseit! and FitBit and Fit Day still is better than all of them. Don't know why anyone would use the internet though if you have the PC version.

Aah ha mkozlow, you say there is a recipe bulider in at least the PC version you have. Interesting, because mecompco said Fitday does not have this - perhaps they thought I was enquiring about something different.

Who knows!!

But I agree with you Fitday is the best program of this type that I have tried so far. I'll stick with it!

Aah ha mkozlow, you say there is a recipe bulider in at least the PC version you have. Interesting, because mecompco said Fitday does not have this - perhaps they thought I was enquiring about something different.

Who knows!!

But I agree with you Fitday is the best program of this type that I have tried so far. I'll stick with it!

Good luck

Bec, I stand corrected. Yes, you can, indeed, build a custom food using ingredients and it works well. I basically use the PC version for when I'm away from an Internet connection but this feature is a great reason to use it more. Sorry for misinforming you!

Regards,
Michael

PS If you do decide to buy the PC version, do a search for discount codes first.

I use the custom recipe feature in PC version quite a bit. It is great if you have things you make quite often. I have even used it just to play with a recipe and see what the calories would be and how tweaking ingredients or serving sizes would tweak calories, nutrients, etc.

I guess the strength of a product is its ease of use and how often you use it.

For building a custom food from a recipe, I use [link removed]. It used to be just [link removed], and I've been using it for a long time. It's not as easy to use as fitday but for custom recipes, you just have to put in the work and then enter the data in fitday as a custom food. More steps. What I like about it is that shows you so much information, and again, I've been using it for a long time so some things feel 'second nature.' I use their nutrient screening tool quite a bit, too.

One thing I heard suggested on the fat 2 fit podcast (iTunes, and free) is making up a standard breakfast, for example, that you eat often and simply calling it Breakfast1 (any name) and entering it as a custom food. What a neat idea. Instead of breaking it all down to the various components and entering them. If you eat the same mix of foods, in the same quantities, often, you do have a kind of generic breakfast and it can be measured, labeled and entered with one stroke.